Prospectus Idol Entry

Kila Ka'aihue

The emergence of Kila Ka'aihue (pronounced KEY-luh Kuh-eye-HOO-a) as a legitimate prospect was one of the top two surprises (along with Mike Aviles) of 2008 for the player development department of the Royals front office. After receiving dismal offensive production from first base (.720 OPS, ranking 27th in the Majors) in 2008, the Royals doubled their pleasure by drafting first baseman Eric Hosmer with the 3rd pick in the draft, and having a breakout year by the 6'3", 230-pound Ka'aihue.

Born and raised in Hawaii, Kila and his younger brother, Kala (a farmhand in the Braves organization), are the sons of former Pirates minor league catcher, Kala Ka'aihue, Sr. Kila flew under the radar in high school given the (surprising) difficulty of attracting scouts to the islands from the mainland. Eric Tokunaga, a part-time Royals scout, saw him throw 90-mph as a high school sophomore, but after Kila smashed a ball farther than Tokunaga had ever seen, he recommended Ka'aihue focus on hitting.

Micah Kilakila Ka'aihue was drafted by the Royals in the 15th round (438th overall) of the 2002 Amateur Draft right out of Iolani high school. After discussing his options with his father, the left-handed batter decided to accept the Royals offer and forgo attending the University of Nebraska for baseball (where he would have been teammates with current Royal Alex Gordon) or going to the University of Southern California or Oregon for football. The 18-year old started his professional career that year by playing in 43 games for the Gulf Coast Royals, with a modest line of .259/.381/.381.

His first two years of full-time professional ball were with the Burlington Bees of the Midwest League, a league typically known for low offensive numbers. Over the course of those two seasons, he had a solid, but not eye-opening .759 OPS (the Midwest League OPS average was .680 in 2003 and .708 in 2004).

In 2005, he played in the thin air of High Desert (California League), and his numbers jumped. He slugged .497 with a great walk-to-strikeout ratio (97walks, 97 strikeouts). Along with his other High Desert teammates, Billy Butler and Mitch Maier, the 21-year old began to generate some buzz among Royals fans, which included a blurb in the Baseball Prospectus 2006 annual.

After flying high in the desert, it was ironic that his climb up the organizational ranks stalled in Wichita, a city known for aircraft manufacturing. His 2006 season was a disaster, with both injuries (a torn patella tendon in his right knee) and poor performance (a paltry .602 OPS), resulting in a demotion to start the 2007 season. The feeling was that he would likely be just an organizational guy, as evidenced by Baseball Prospectus leaving him out of their 2007 and 2008 annuals. He regained his plate discipline (35:38 BB:K ratio) with some power (.420 SLG) at Wilmington (the Royals had since moved out of High Desert), which earned him a promotion back to Wichita to finish the 2007 season.

In 2008, the Royals moved their AA affiliation to Northwest Arkansas, and Ka'aihue put on a show for the new fans in The Natural State. In his 91 games, he launched 26 home runs, while walking twice as frequently as he struck out (80:41 BB:K ratio). It seemed that he had found the correct balance between aggressiveness and patience, yet there were numerous skeptics as he was now 24, and it was his third season in AA. The Royals had confidence that this wasn't a fluke and promoted him to AAA Omaha mid-season. He continued to mash, belting another 11 homeruns in 114 plate appearances, while maintaining a walk-to-strikeout ratio near one. At the end of the season he was rewarded with a September call-up to Kansas City, where he got 24 plate appearances in which he hit a respectable .804 OPS and hammered his first major league home run. He topped the season off by receiving the Texas League MVP award and the Royals' Minor League Player of the Year award.

After an off-season trade with the Marlins brought first baseman Mike Jacobs to Kansas City, it was pretty clear that the organization wanted Ka'aihue to prove himself another year in the minors. As Ka'aihue told Omaha reporter Rob White, he really didn't think he was going to be on the big league club anyway. He started a little sluggish in April, batting .238 with only 3 home runs, although he did have an OBP of .425, walking 22 times compared to just 18 strikeouts. The hits started coming in May, and he has moved his OPS up to .936 as of June 11th.

Scouting Reports

When talking about Ka'aihue, there is one trait that stands out among all others: plate discipline. Even before his remarkable 2008 campaign, Baseball America had named Ka'aihue the Royals prospect with the best strike-zone judgment. After his monster year, which included a 1.55 BB/K ratio, he retained that label. Also, Baseball America ranked Ka'aihue the 9th best prospect in the Royals farm system, and third best position player behind Mike Moustakas (#1) and Hosmer (#2). Kevin Goldstein of Baseball Prospectus concurred and designated Ka'aihue the 4th best prospect in the Royals organization, and likewise third best position player prospect.

John Sickels had rated Ka'aihue a grade C prospect throughout 2007. He did notice a smoother swing in 2007 as compared to a swing much more mechanical in previous years. While he hadn't seen Ka'aihue personally in 2008, a number of scouts told him that Ka'aihue seems to have figured something out and fixed the remaining flaws in his swing.

J.J. Picollo, the Royals' Director of Player Development, told Dave Sanford of Royals Corner (subscription material) in Spring Training 2008 that he was expecting a big year from Ka'aihue due to his great camp. Ka'aihue had spent the 2007 off-season getting into better shape, and improved his ability to hit the breaking ball and started going the other way with the outside fastball. Despite this, many teams still defense him as a dead-pull hitter. Picollo did admit to Sam Mellinger of the Kansas City Star that he would be lying if he said that he expected 2008 to go as well as it did. One scout told Mellinger that "insane production (that comes) out of nowhere" is not uncommon with prospects from low-competition backgrounds like Hawaii.

Others have noted Ka'aihue's intelligence and attention to detail. He keeps his own thick notebook with all the matchups he's had against the pitchers that he's faced throughout his career.

What are the knocks on Ka'aihue? Sickels felt he was slow on the basepath, but had some decent range in the field at first. Kevin Goldstein counters that he is a sluggish defender and that his only value will come with the bat. Also, there are a significant number of scouts who still wonder if 2008 was a fluke. Mellinger has talked to ten different scouts, and has gotten ten different opinions, with one even saying that despite his production, they still see a slow bat, and another saying that Ka'aihue is "a dream that's not happening." Essentially, the 2009 season will be huge in terms of future perceptions.

Performance Evaluation

To put the 2008 breakout year in perspective, let's examine Ka'aihue's six full years in the minors:

Now for those paying attention, you'll notice that something seems wrong with these numbers. I can hear you saying, "I thought he had a breakout season in 2005 at High Desert but this shows just a mild improvement in batting average and not much else." The reason is that I adjusted the 2005 numbers using a Minor League Equivalency calculator (http://www.minorleaguesplits.com/mlecalc.html) based on Sean Smith's formulae. The 2005 data are the equivalent of what he would have hit had the Royals kept their advanced A team in Wilmington, a much more neutral park. Except for the injury-plagued 2006, Ka'aihue has showed consistent, but not particularly remarkable production at each level from 2004 to 2007. By removing the affects of High Desert, we see that 2008 truly seems to be completely out of nowhere based on the previous five years.

Essentially, this has been the story of Omaha first basemen four times in the last seven years. Up to this point, the Royals have little more than three mediocre major league seasons and a token all-star selection to show for it. Royals fans know the list all too well: Ken Harvey, Calvin Pickering, Craig Brazell, and Ryan Shealy. Is Ka'aihue's production for real, or is it the next in a long line of teasers?

By doing this comparison, there is a lot to suggest that Ka'aihue may not be a mirage. Except for Harvey (who posted only mediocre numbers in Omaha, but did have the best ML career of the four), Ka'aihue was three years younger than the others, and once again the plate discipline jumps out at you. Omaha manager, Mike Jirschele told MLB.com that unlike Pickering, he can handle the good fastball up. Sickels likes the BB/K/AB line as an indicator of future success.

There is one piece of evidence that does suggest a likely regression from his 2008 season.

The home run to doubles ratio in 2008 is so vastly different than the rest of his career. Some feel that a huge power surge in home runs, without a corresponding increase in doubles is the sign of a fluke. In Bill James' study of the 96 types of different hitters, a small number of major leaguers have a ratio of HR/2B over 1.00, and it almost never tops 1.50 for any sustainable period. In fact, only nine of the top 100 home run hitters have hit 50% more home runs than doubles for their career. Jim Thome is the highest active player with a ratio of just 1.36. Based on Ka'aihue's track record, a more reasonable assumption is a HR/2B ratio of 0.60. On a positive note for 2009, Ka'aihue is knocking extra base hits at an even higher rate than 2008, though balls that were leaving the park last year seem to be just bouncing off the wall this year.

Projecting the Future

If we look at Ka'aihue's plate appearances in AAA and translate these to their Major League Equivalents we get:

The .991 OPS that he has in Omaha translates (using the Sean Smith MLE formulae) to a .801 OPS in Kansas City. So far in 2009, with Butler and Jacobs getting most of the duties, Kansas City first basemen have a line of .289/.347/.452. The designated hitters were even worse, with a line of .200/.278/.376. We can begin to understand the frustration that has existed amongst many Royals fans about Ka'aihue not being with the major league club.

How is Ka'aihue doing compared to the expectations for this year? The most common projections (sorted by OPS) are shown in the table below:

The second to last line are the weighted slash stats of the six projections, while the last line is the Projection Average translated back to AAA Omaha using the Minor League Equivalency calculator. The Omaha Equivalent is pretty close to what he has accomplished. These projections for a 25 year-old suggest a solid, but not spectacular, major-league first baseman in the future.

Kevin Goldstein of Baseball Prospectus suggests a likely range of possible outcomes. On the high side, "Ka'aihue will be an everyday big-league first basemen who hits in the middle of the lineup." Some of the top comparables from PECOTA are David Ortiz (#5) and Travis Hafner (#8). On the downside he could be a "second-division starter…limited to designated-hitting duties because of his glove." His #1 and #2 comparables are career minor leaguers Sal Rende and Pat Dodson. A cautionary reminder to Royals fans is that Bob Hamelin is Ka'aihue's #12 comparable.

Some of Ka'aihue's future will be out of his control, based on the current logjam of slightly above replacement-level first basemen/designated hitters currently ahead of Ka'aihue: Butler, Jacobs, and Shealy. Beyond these three, Ka'aihue will also need to be looking in the rear-view mirror at the progression of Hosmer. If one assumes that Shealy has missed his window of opportunity and Mike Jacobs is just a temporary fixture (though the Royals do have control of him through 2011), that leaves Billy Butler, who is two years younger, and Ka'aihue sharing the first base and designated hitter duties. The next big question is then who will be the odd man out when (or if) Eric Hosmer is ready.

Tim Kniker is an author of Baseball Prospectus. Click here to see Tim's other articles.
You can contact Tim by clicking here

This is a really solid piece of work, maybe Tim's most readable stuff. I like that he didn't get too bogged down in the heavy stats that we all know are his strength and instead filled in the details around a nicely structured story. I think he gave a bit of short shrift to the "sandwich" problem - having Jacobs in front of him and Hosmer behind, but nothing's perfect. This isn't Tim's wheelhouse and he still nailed it.

Jun 13, 2009 17:43 PM

Kevin Goldstein

BP staff

Really liked this one. Liked the High Desert Adjustment, liked the bringing out of the long list of Omaha bashers. You definitely took the basic structure and went in a lot of interesting places with it, and they're places you wouldn't even know to go unless you really knew your stuff. Outstanding.

Jun 13, 2009 22:12 PM

Marc Normandin

You nailed the Player Profile format, putting together a cohesive, very readable piece that explains just who K.K. was, is and is supposed to be in the future, all while adding a few flavors of your own to the mix. There is no shortage of context for all of your sections, and you don't leave the reader with any questions about your subject. I'm impressed.

Jun 14, 2009 08:47 AM

Christina Kahrl

BP staff

Tim, you did a really impressive amount of homework, both in fishing out a variety of information to fulfill the scouting requirement; I especially liked the care in digging up the Jirschele quote, because one of the things I like to see in these is just the "what" a player is doing, but the "how." An excellent Profile overall, and fine work. I would have liked to have seen some talk about the wide divergence in some of the projections, but that wasn't really in the scope of this piece, and given that you did such substantive work on your player, it's also understandable. Consider this a hint about something that might be a cool future topic.

Minor quibble: AB/HR or AB/XBH have limited utility as data points, especially with a hitter like this; non-ABPA, walks, HBPs, SFs, sac bunts... those things happen, and to build a table that tells us that walk-oriented hitters like Pickering or KK do better than someone like Shealy or Harvey by this metric isn't really informative.

"Kila Ka'aihue (pronounced KEY-luh Kuh-eye-HOO-a)?" Normally I have to learn how to pronounce the acronym for the flashy new stat, but in your case I have to learn how to pronounce the player's name.

Well done: this was my favorite of the week. I like the way you seamlessly integrated so many different sources while discussing a player whose mix of skills may reasonably leave him in either AAA or MLB.

Well, sort of. It won't tell you how to pronounce Chone Figgins, though they do weigh in on Marquis Grissom. It will also tell you that Duchscherer is pronounced "DUKE-shur" (really?), but it won't tell you how to pronounce Koji Uehara (which I have yet to hear any announcer get right).

As is becoming the norm around this competition Tim's piece is once again my favorite, and the one I feel should be considered the standard the others are viewed against. This has been the case all but one time. Great job.

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Overall another fine article. It might not have some of the unique angles used by other finalists but it was very solid and well put together. I especially liked the comparisons to the minor league performances of other Royals first baseman. My only minor quibble was in trying to backtrack to find the 2009 slash stats so I could easily relate those numbers to each chart.

Solid for sure. I have now read all 7, and I still really can't distinguish one from another. I am pretty sure that is the topic and the more strict guidelines than it is the authors. Nobody really went outside the box in structuring their piece.

I enjoyed the article. I appreciated an analysis of a more obscure player, especially one with such a cool name. Your article was a nice blend of stats and scouts, with the humor of a long-suffering Royals fan thrown in for good measure. I hadn't thought of the HR/2B before.

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I wouldn't be worried. Note that Rob Neyer, Rany Jazayerli and Joe Posnanski are Royals fans and often introduce people to Baseball Prospectus and there's a good chance that people here have heard of the Royals farm system (or lack thereof) including Kila... though I'll admit that I need to check my bookshelf to see if Kila really wasn't in the 2007 and 2008 annuals.

It's been funny that both Kila and Kala have been up and down as prospects.

KG had Kala as his 4th best 1B prospect in a Future Shock column from July 2007. Last year he had a very good (but not mind-blowing) season at AA (.274/.417/.457), yet he seems to have fallen from the list of prospects. He doesn't even make KG's Top 11 for the Braves (or the other 3 honorable mentions) and he was excluded from the 2009 Annual (and there is no PECOTA card this year).

Maybe BP not giving him any love has lead to his really poor start this year? He's only got a line of .172/.318/.297 in 52 games this year.

Well, by that age, he should be dominating AA. Also, if that was 2007, then there's a year's worth of prospects to come into the system since him. In addition, a first baseman's value is almost solely tied into his bat.. so if he's not hitting, there are plenty of other first base bats who become better prospects. It's not like a center fielder or shortstop who can make up for their lack of a bat with their defensive abilities...

Well, talking off the cuff, you have two relatively local teams (Kansas City and St. Louis) and two other teams that are still close (both Chicago teams), along with a 1985 World Series. The idea of having four "regional" teams, two from each league, might suggest that people are more aware of events beyond their "favorite" team.

Meanwhile, I would guess (off the cuff) that the media market there is not as dominating as it would be in Los Angeles and New York, perhaps making it easier for a voice like James to get some circulation and some fans until Stats Inc. got set up in the Chicago area.

Or maybe that's just overthinking things... James had some great ideas and was a Royals fan, Neyer was from the area and got to know James from being a Royals fan, then working for Stats Inc., etc. then others got exposed to James via Neyer, who has been writing on ESPN.com since its inception.

Content: A-
I loved getting the pronunciation for Kila Ka'aihue - it does sound pretty and it is embarrassing to be mispronouncing players names as I often do.) (Yes, I qualify as an intense Fantasy Baseball Player http://scoresheetwiz.tripod.com/id1.html, and this covers what I want to know without too much of what I don't need to know.)

Writing: B
Some of the sentences - including the opening one - seemed a little long and unwieldy. I had a little bit of trouble following along in the beginning, then the rest flowed out nicely.

I think this is solid, but you found your hook halfway through the article when you talked about other impressive Omaha 1Bs. That probably should have framed the entire discussion of Kila's profile -- "We've seen something like this before... is this one for real?"

Good point. I think I tied myself a little too much to the example that they had which is very much:

Background
Scouting
Evaluation
Future projection

I probably should have helped lead the reader to that point structuring it:

Royals fans have been tempted by 1B mashing at Omaha
Here's the new flavor.

And the the hope is that the reason why he is different is that his plate discipline is off the charts compared to others, and that some (like Sickels) think that is a really good indicator of future success (or at least a likelihood of meeting the average projections)

I can't find a reference to this online. It's in his book this year called the "The Bill James Gold Mine 2009" I'm not a member of billjamesonline.com so I don't know if it's in there.

The basic concept is that he defines all hitters with over 2000 career PAs(or some significant number like that) and based on the ratio of 2B/3B/HR rounded to the nearest digit such that they all sum up to 10. So a player who is 406 is a player (like a Jim Thome) who hits no triples and 50% more home runs than doubles. A player like George Brett is 613 given that he has enough speed such that 10% of his XBH are triples and he then hits about twice as many doubles as homers, and 3x as many homers as triples.

There's two further stratifications in these high-level classifications based on OPS and then he breaks down groups further based on K-rate if he felt that group was "Too Big"

Anyways, I remember a comment thread on Kila talking about his lack of doubles in 2008 and that he was a complete fluke based on that, and that sparked my memory about the Bill James article (which pointed me to the realization that very few players knock homers significanlty more than doubles), and then it did a little search.

In fact the ONLY top 100 home run hitter who has more than twice as many home runs as doubles? Yup, you guessed it. Mark McGwuire, who had something like a HR/2B of 2.33. Here's the top 5:

It makes sense.. powerful hitters would hit the ball hard enough so it either leaves the park, or doesn't quite clear the fence and ends up as a double.

Hmm... very very silly question, but I wonder if a HR/2B comparison would be useful for investigating the effects of PEDs... the idea that even a slight strength game would turn some of those doubles into home runs.

I think that gets down a slippery slope. It would be interesting to see if McGwire went from point A early in his career versus point B in ratio.

What would be interesting is by age to check this ratio for a lot of top hitters (even those not HR hitters per se), but look at the power curve and look at HR/2B as opposed to HR/AB or something like that.

I'm not sure you're going to find anything, but it would be interesting to find if someone had either a bigger peak than most or seemed to have a longer life of HR/2B in his mid to late thirties.

That's why telecommuting is fun :) Though I need to drive in in a bit, so you'll have some respite.

Hmm.. note the numbers dip after 2004. 2004 was the first year of mandatory random testing and April 2005 was the first round of PED suspensions (Alex Sanchez, Jorge Piedra, Agustin Montero and Jamal Strong along with six others with MLB experience who were in the minors like Jon Nunnally). I guess the question then is whether the drop from 2004 to 2005 is statistically significant or not.

I'm not great at correlations and sample sizes etc so it just might be a normal pattern of fluctuating power but it seems interesting to look at. It might not have anything to do with PEDs or even something like amphetamines, but certain players like McGwire retiring. I remember the commentary about how many of Kevin Youkilis's home runs were just barely over the fence so establishing some kind of baseline like this to compare players to might be insightful.

Eric Walker does something very similar to this in his look at the "steroid era" effect. He used total bases per hit as his 'normalized' measure of relative power, then looked at the history of that metric, to see if there were an identifiable "steroid era" effect. If you haven't read his work, you should: http://steroids-and-baseball.com/.

I'd read Walker's work some time ago.. I think it might've even been linked from BP.com at one point.

I think HR/2B works a bit differently since it shows directly how many doubles (which are often balls that are hit hard) turn into home runs.. where PF can be affected by league batting average increasing. Also, all the extra bases being counted by PF might not measure the distribution of how those extra bases are achieved.

Deciding which writer to leave out is getting really hard, really fast.

The contestants are doing great stuff.

I hope the BP team considers giving us a week with no elimination at some point. The reason is purely selfish. I'd just like to read more from these folks and that would give us an extra week of material to help distinguish their content.

Getting down to one from here is going to be brutal. Something for the contestants to consider going forward - the typos and misuse of words will start to matter. Because frankly we in the peanut gallery are going to need ways to pick "A better than B." And stupid stuff is an easy out for us. Keep the quality high and make it hard on us.

I actually meant to have the scouting report section be a little scattershot. Ka'aihue is one of those players where the scouts seem to be all over the place. I wanted to give the reader the feel that there isn't a smooth, "consensus" opinion of him.

Only with a few of the statistics do we see his one constant: plate discipline and the associated BB/K ratio. That really has almost always been there. He's going to walk a lot, but not strike out like other power hitters. He's going to put the ball in play.

The other thing is that anyone hoping for a repeat of 2008 is dreaming. His HR/2B ratio is unsustainable. However, a very good sign is that he's still hitting XBH/AB (or XBH/PA for CK) is still very good. He's not a 1.078 OPS guy, but in Omaha he definitely is around a .925 - .975 OPS kind of guy which translates to a .800 OPS guy in KC. Not stellar, but a solid ML first baseman.

I think your .900 OPS is very high, but it may be what you define as "much of a career." If you define "much of a career" as needing to be a Top 10 1B/DH for at least 5-7 years (Hafner, Ortiz, Texiera), than I would agree, probably not.

However, if you define "much of a career" as being able to play in the big leagues for 7+ years and putting up league average numbers for some of those (think Mike Sweeney), than I have to disagree with you. Maybe it's the problem of low expectations of being a Royals fan, but if you told me the Royals could have a 1B for the next 6 years who's going to give me .800 - .820 OPS, I think I would take it.

I just looked at the last 10 years, and espeically if you take out 2000-2002 for steroid era effects and just focus on 2003-2008, then essentially the average OPS of AL first baseman AND AL designated hitters hovers between .790 - .810.

So I respectfully disagree and say that a 1B/DH who can put up an .800 OPS two years before his peak year is probably going to be a productive, league-average 1B/DH in the AL for likely a 5 - 8 year span. No, he's not likely to get
$120M/8 year player for the Yankees/Red Sox? No way.

Low .800 with bad defense is aiming awfully low. Those are not the sort of players you want to give 7+ years to except out of desparation. Mike Sweeney batted over .900 four years in a row ages 25-28. I'm sure Cal Pickering could have hit .800 O+S. Those below average hitting first-baseman/DHs are either outstanding fielders such Mientkiewicz and Overbay, or they are better hitters having off years, or they are desperation fill-ins until the team can develop someone better. Any team that is comfortable with a low .800 first-baseman with bad defense as a long term solution is not going to be competitive.

Hey, I thought that was weird, too. I would have given Ka'aihue a shot before I spent anything significant on a Mike Jacobs. In fact, I don't see what Jacobs is good for. He's not even significantly better than Shealy, if at all. I'd let Ka'aihue be the starter at first or DH depending on whether he is a better fielder than Butler until Hosmer is ready. By then we'll know better what Ka'aihue and Butler will be. Perhaps, they will blossom into .900 hitters. If they are still .800 hitters, no one will miss them to make room for Hosmer. We know what Jacobs is, and it is not useful blocking Ka'aihue.

Before the season we had Butler, Gload, Jacobs, Ka'aihue, and Shealy. Thank goodness we got rid of the $1.5M of wasted contract for Gload that we didn't need.

Once again, the issue has been for Shealy to stay healthy. He missed time in both 2006 and 2007. He stayed pretty heatlhy in 2008, but yet again he's got an injury in which he has missed over a month. Unfortunately, I think Shealy's time has come and gone. Then again, I'm not sure how much of that potential was just from playing AAA in inflated parks like Colorado Springs and Omaha. In the end I think he was going to be a .775 OPS player

I can understand the wanting to give Ka'aihue one more year to prove himself as my article shows this easily could have been a one year fluke.

If Ka'aihue continues with a .900+ OPS at Omaha this year, this off-season becomes interesting because the Royals really do have 3 players who can only play 1B/DH. In terms of fielding, Butler's the best at likely league average (he was awful last year, but the last fielding numbers in +/- have him +5) with Ka'aihue likely 2nd, and Jacobs a brutal 3rd. Butler's the youngest as he is still only 23 and he's the only right-handed bat of the three. I think Moore is really going to have to make a decision between Jacobs and Ka'aihue.

I agree with your point about choosing between Jacobs and Ka'aihue, but also think the Royals should consider moving Butler while he has some trade value. He is a righthanded 1B/DH, one of the easiest positions to fill.

I think I disagree with that from an economic standpoint. If a right-handed 1B/DH is so easy to fill, than by definition he should have little value, correct? A team like the Royals should be focusing on keeping the Billy Butlers (23 year-old, some upside, only costs $421K this year, will control through 2013) versus the Mike Jacobs (28 year-old, not much upside, costs $3.25M, will control for 2 more years).

I think the thing that is frustrating Royals fans is the amount of money that is being spent on slightly above replacement value (Guillen, Jacobs, Farnsworth) where we do have some pieces in the minors who can give slightly less VORP but a lot less money (Maier, Ka'aihue, Rosa), and then pool that money and make the push for where it is really needed like Orlando Hudson or Rafael Furcal. There is some hope, because it does finally feel like there is some talent in the minors (though not much position player wise beyond Moustakas, Hosmer, & Ka'aihue) and the team isn't the patchwork that it once was with Baird at the helm. In general, I've liked what Dayton Moore has done mostly, but I think he's shown an inability to determine true value on the Free Agent market. His one exception has been Meche which was a very good signing.

It's kind of been a standard operating procedure for the Royals the last decade or so to overpay for mediocrity. Perhaps that way they appear "busy" and aren't just pocketing money received from revenue sharing (which is ironic, coming from the owner of Walmart).

And yeah, Dayton Moore's done some nice things, but the Royals had nowhere to go but up. He seems a bit like Wayne Krivisky in a way in that he's good at finding free talent... but you also get what you pay for.

I agree with your comments on the Guillen/Jacobs/Farnsworth problem, but my point was that it makes sense to consider moving Butler precisely because his low salary will increase what you might get in return. The perception of Butler is that his upside is high and his cost is low. I question the upside. He currently sports a .736 OPS, but .835 against LHP and only .672 against RHP. He had similar results in 2007-8. Given that most teams see far more RHPs, his upside seems more apparent than real to me. He could be replaced pretty easily, perhaps with a guy who could platoon with Ka'aihue. But I suspect some teams might be interested in him. The analogy is not perfect, but the Delmon Young trade is an example of the kind of trade I am suggesting.

Tim, I think you nailed the topic and assignment and wrote the best article of the week (for the second straight week). This was a great profile and probably the most similar to something we'd see on this site from one of the regulars. Great work, again.